“After 20 years, I always kind of figured an email like this would start with ‘It is with a heavy heart that I leave…’ The truth is, I can’t get out of here fast enough,” writes 20-year prosecutor Jason Poje in a resignation letter that he sent to his colleagues in the Cook County, Ill. prosecutor’s office.
The letter should be read in its entirety in order to feel the depth of Poje’s anger and remorse he feels for what his beloved city has become.
I feel his pain. I’ve spent much of my 69 years living in and around Chicago and have stood by helplessly as what was once a world-class city — “the city that works” — degenerate into a third-world cesspool of violence, corruption, and an epic cynicism that has killed idealism and murdered hope.
“The simple fact is that this State and County have set themselves on a course to disaster. And the worst part is that the agency for whom I work has backed literally every policy change that had the predictable, and predicted, outcome of more crime and more people getting hurt,” Poje wrote, referring to the office of Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.
Exactly. What has happened to Chicago was foreseen by many on all sides of the political spectrum. It’s not a mystery. There’s no need to convene a “blue-ribbon committee” or create a “Fact Finding Panel” to discover the “root causes” of what’s gone wrong. If the law is not enforced and order is not maintained, chaos results.
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“Bond reform designed to make sure no one stays in jail while their cases are pending with no safety net to handle more criminals on the streets, shorter parole periods, lower sentences for repeat offenders, the malicious and unnecessary prosecution of law enforcement officers, overuse of diversion programs, intentionally not pursuing prosecutions for crimes lawfully on the books after being passed by our legislature and signed by a governor, all of these so-called reforms have had a direct negative impact, with consequences that will last for a generation,” he continued.
Poje is being optimistic. What ails Chicago won’t be fixed in one generation. The city was a century getting into this mess and it’s going to take a century to get out of it.
“Many years ago my family found a nice quiet corner of the suburbs. Now my son, who is only 5, hears gunfire while playing at our neighborhood park, and a drug dealer is open-air selling behind my house (the second one in two years),” Poje wrote.
“I will not raise my son here. I am fortunate enough to have the means to escape, so my entire family is leaving the State of Illinois. I grew up here, my family and friends are here, and yet my own employer has turned it into a place from which I am no longer proud to be, and in which my son is not safe,” he added.
The game of pretend is strong in Chicago. Democrats pretend that the violence is caused by too many guns. They believe that taking people off the streets who threaten the peace and well-being of citizens is racist. They think that because stores have insurance that will reimburse owners for looting and shoplifting, there’s no reason companies should pull up stakes and leave for safer climes.
And now, Chicago has a newly elected mayor, Brandon Johnson, who will be the biggest pretender of them all — a mayor on record for wanting to defund the police, who sees racism behind every door and under every bed.
As the city sinks, Johnson and his pals in the teachers’ union will make sure they get theirs before the lights go out.
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